Rant of the day

There has been an explosion of posters and advertisements around Edinburgh in the last few weeks. The subject, the new GAP clothes range. To most people the posters are completely unintelligible. There is a picture of a young child in a warm outfit with the words “Holiday is Here” underneath. I have seen people looking wistfully at the poster with puzzled expressions. As they turn away, I can see them thinking, "Why is the child going on her holidays in such warm clothes? Perhaps she’s going on a trip to Lapland to see Father Christmas or maybe a skiing holiday?"

I assume that the advertisements refer to the impending Christmas season. We do make the most of the bank holidays over Christmas and New Year and schools close for a couple of weeks Christmas holidays but our main holiday is in the summer. People go on holidays at various times in the year but I would guess that for most people late November/early December is a relatively unlikely time to go holiday. We’re too busy doing our Christmas shopping.

Yes, I know that in America most of these are known as vacations (not a word in general use outside universities here) and holiday is only used for what we call bank holidays. I know that America has a significant Jewish population as well as many other religions so it is a convenient term more likely to include than alienate people …but …

If GAP want to have a stores in Britain or anywhere else for that matter, they should recognise that their global advertising campaigns should use words which can be understood unambiguously in the relevant country. I asked a member of staff to explain the words on the poster - she hadn’t realised what it meant. It isn’t even good marketing!!!

[/rant]